


Have To Do This Standing

by whatever_forever



Category: BioShock
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Real!Atlas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 08:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6368281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatever_forever/pseuds/whatever_forever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jatlas fluff collection <br/>notes give specific set-up for each entry<br/>Atlas is a real person in all of these<br/>hey sometimes this ship can get really scary and im not here for that. let my underwater children be happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All is Well

**Author's Note:**

> AU where everyone including At gets out alive and they live on a goddamn farm because how do u argue against that

It had been a long day.  
The weight on the farmhouse hung over everyone like a heavy blanket, and it felt to Jack like the heat of the summer was never going to let up.  
Atlas had warned him about this. He told Jack how hot it gets in rural America in the summer, and Jack had ignored him on the grounds that this dumb fucker wanted to move to New York and raise eight kids in an apartment. 

“It’s understandable that you don’t want to live in a city, love-”  
“Oh, is it? Is it really?”  
“-but you’re heat sensitive and it’s hotter than satan’s armpit in Kansas.”  
“I’ll take my chances.”

And so they had ended up with a small house, an even smaller barn, a herd of sheep, two cows and a chicken coop. The children were all over it, and Jack thought Atlas seemed happy enough. Tenenbaum was often too exhausted to care about major life decisions, and as long as she had a room with a desk and an armchair she was happy. She had taken to writing in her spare time, the old typewriter she had from Fontaine Futuristics was left behind in a darkened underwater office somewhere. Along the road from the New York City port to their new home, Atlas had found a new one for her at a yard sale. Sometimes they would fall asleep to the sound of her fingers hitting the keys relentlessly as she wrote everything down as far as she could remember. Jack sometimes wondered if it was therapeutic or a new compulsion.  
When Jack asked her about what she wrote, all she did was rifle through her desk and pull out a few papers.  
“There’s a section about you,” she said, before returning to humming along with the clacking of the keyboard.  
“All is well for him. He’s in love, he’s a father. This little experiment born of no free will, conditioned to follow orders to his death- he is the strongest source of love and light any of us has ever known. Who would have told?” said the first line, and Jack set the papers down and pulled her into a hug.  
All is well, he thought as he poured milk into eight cereal bowls before school in the morning, and as he checked eight sets of math problems and as he read a story to eight sleepyheads in the evening before bed.  
It could be so much worse, his nightmares reminded him.  
On more than one occasion he had woken to a strong pair of hands wrapped over his chest, kisses pressed to his neck, “wake up, Jack please wake up, it’s just a dream, it’s alright, love” over and over until Atlas was convinced that he believed him. And there were times when Jack had to return the favor. Sometimes not one night in a week would pass without the two of them collapsing into each other, sometimes they almost slipped into a place where they wouldn’t get out of, but Jack had learned that jumping into the abyss wasn’t scary at all as long as you knew someone was there to catch you.  
And someone would always be there, he realized late on a Sunday night after Mascha and Leta had put up an incredibly persuasive argument about why they should all stay up to listen to the kids’ favorite radio drama. Tenenbaum had wrapped the children in a knitted blanket and was nearly falling asleep herself, dozing off in an overstuffed chair, while Atlas and Jack were leaning against the remnants of a pillow fort from earlier that no one had gotten around to picking up. Jack had his head against his boyfriend’s shoulder and was enjoying the warmth and soft light in the room, thanking whatever god there might be for his kindness. They had all gotten out, safe and alive and, he was certain, able to recover. Atlas was breathing slowly, his chest rising and falling steadily as another laugh track played over the children’s giggles, pattering like the gentle rain over their heads. How he had gone from a liar, a cheat, and an anti-capitalist revolutionary to someone who made lemonade for his eight adopted kids on a weekend was something he would never quite figure out, but he figured he had his dumb brave loving boyfriend to curse for it.


	2. Staircase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurt/comfort in fort frolic  
> very mild gore? tw

They sat together at the top of the staircase.   
Jack had his shortwave radio unclipped from his belt and stored away. His hands were folded, resting on his knees. He turned his wrist over, watching the blood drip in a thin stream down from his shoulder.  
Atlas reached into his own pocket and pulled out a long strip of what looked like cotton off a floral print dress, his makeshift bandage. Plenty of clothed corpses, plenty of material. He pulled the collar of Jack’s sweater down absentmindedly, disinfectant in one hand and a knife between his teeth. He applied the solution with the precision of a man who’d stitched his friends up in a pinch all his life.  
Jack gasped as the solution soaked into his open wound, watching the thick blue drops fall and dissolve. Somewhere, a splicer croned its malicious intent, somewhere a record began playing, somewhere a child began to cry. He had familiarized all of these sounds and he knew what each one meant.He bit the inside of his lip   
“Sorry,” Atlas mumbled through his teeth, fixated on threading a needle, trying to bend his sights around the dark purple hue of the Fort.   
Jack looked away from him, trying to distract himself by watching the water as it spilled from the leak in the ceiling and onto the stairway, a miniature cataract cooling the room and spraying everything within a five foot radius with a light sheet of mist.   
Beside him, Atlas was swearing at his needle. Jack closed his eyes, wanting to lean up against him but knowing that would be unwelcomed. He breathed in the other man’s scent, like burning wood and black coffee. Atlas reached into Jack’s bag and took out a bottle of vodka.  
“Are you trying to knock me out?” Jack asked, eyeing the bottle, mock suspicion in his voice.  
Atlas grimaced. “I’m only using it to clean up whatever unlucky patch of skin the needle’s going through. If you want an anesthetic we’re going to have to find a different way.”  
“I’ll stay awake.”  
Atlas took Jack’s arm in his hand, brushing away the last bits of shotgun shell. His pride and joy, a sewing needle he’d threaded in the dark, held between three fingers.  
“Little known fact about me,” Jack said, finally collapsing against Atlas’s shoulder. “I hate needles.”  
He was expecting a laugh, but all he got was a kiss on the head and a warm, strong hand wrapped tightly in his own.  
“I’ll be quick, love. Only a moment.”  
The first prick came quickly, but not without a sting and then the burning of hard alcohol on exposed skin. Somewhere, a splicer dragged a lead pipe against the floor. Somewhere, a woman was screaming, on fire, burning alive. Somewhere a man made out of metal roared in anger, though he would never know who was to blame.   
Here, Atlas had reached the end of his thread and tied a knot between two layers in Jack’s skin. Here, the inside of Jack’s lip was bleeding from how hard he had bit down on it to keep from crying out. Here Atlas apologized again and again, and Jack knew there was only one thing that was going to shut him up.  
He didn’t bother with his sweater sleeve. It was in tatters anyway. He ran his fingers through Atlas’s dark hair and kissed him with gentle reassurance, he kissed him softly and promised that he wasn’t ever going to let anything happen to him, that as long as they were together they were safe and that they shouldn’t ever be afraid. They were so close now.  
Atlas was still a grieving man, even as they inched towards freedom. Jack couldn’t forget.


End file.
